Tennis
by Never-Clip-My-Wings-x
Summary: "I can't sodding play tennis, though!" Sandra exclaimed in incredulous fury as she read the letter informing her that she was on the station's mixed doubles team for the upcoming inter-division tournament. Bloody hell, DS White or whatever his name was had some nerve. Tennis! He had to be having a laugh. Sandra/Strickland & Sandra/Gerry.
1. Chapter 1

"I can't sodding play tennis, though!" Sandra exclaimed in incredulous fury as she read the letter informing her that she was on the station's mixed doubles team for the upcoming inter-division tournament. Bloody hell, DS White or whatever his name was had some nerve. Tennis?! He had to be having a laugh. The last time Sandra Pullman had played tennis had been at an ill-fated, alcohol fuelled game at university following Wimbledon in 1979, in which she'd sprained her ankle and her friends had broken various bones, amongst other injuries, and a spectator had been given a black eye by a stray tennis ball. No, Sandra could absolutely not play tennis.

"Tennis?" Gerry asked from his position on the red sofa in the office. He'd raised one eyebrow in a cross between confusion and amusement, as he looked through the glass window into his Guv's office. Blimey, what he wouldn't do to see her in a tennis skirt, mind. Along with half of the Met, of course.

Sandra stormed through into the main office, clutching the letter with her right hand and making small imprints upon it with her perfectly manicured nails. The last time the team had seen her quite that angry was when Strickland had told her she had to present an award to an ex-boyfriend at a function - when she'd returned to the office that day, she'd thrown half a case file at the coffee machine ("Bloody American shit!") and decided to shred the majority of her paperwork.

"DS White," she began, trying to be calmer and quieter than she succeeded in being, "Has signed me up for the mixed doubles tennis match in the inter-division tournament."

Gerry looked at Steve, who proceeded to bury his head in a case file to stop himself snorting with laughter, although his shaking shoulders rather gave his amusement away. Gerry, unfortunately for him, had no such way of disguising his glee at the announcement, and burst out laughing at the prospect of Sandra having to play tennis.

"Who are you playing with?" Brian asked, seemingly not understanding the amusement of his colleagues, both of whom seemed close to having some kind of heart failure. He imagined Sandra would be quite a good tennis player - she had the height and strength for such a game, and if all else failed, she could probably knock the opposition out, or kill them with a steely glare she often directed at Gerry.

Sandra scanned the piece of paper with her ice blue eyes, looking for a name, and finally came across one... not the one she wanted to see. Why couldn't it have been DCI Lowe, the really fit one? DS Arden, the one with the incredibly gorgeous body? Hell, she'd even have played with Gerry, just for the amusement of it.

"Strickland."

Gerry, at this precise point, had calmed down and was just taking a sip of tea, when he was met with the news that Sandra was going to have to play doubles tennis with Strickland. He spluttered the tea, the hot drink going all over the place as he threw his head back and practically howled with laughter - Strickland! Steve didn't seem to be able to hide his amusement, either, and joined Gerry in laughing at their Guv, who was still looking absolutely mutinous. Even Brian had seen the funny side of the whole thing, and was now joining his colleagues in hysterical laughter.

Sandra marched back into her office, slamming the door behind her. _Tennis. With Strickland_. How much worse could things possibly get?

Sitting down, she decided to check her emails - a good murder would cheer her up, doubtless. She contemplated asking Gerry for a packet of cigarettes, on the basis that they might kill her before things actually got worse, if that was at all possible. Which, it turned out, it was.

Her newest email had been flagged as high priority from Strickland - she hoped that this would mean a big case to crack, or at worse, an invitation for her and the UCOS team to go out to dinner to celebrate some minor achievement or other. But oh, no.

"Subject: Tennis Practice."

Well, that filled her with confidence. Sport? High priority?

"Message: DS White emailed me earlier to inform me that you are my partner for the doubles tournament. Practice for all participants starts Tuesday in the Sports Hall at the station, 6pm sharp. Bring sportswear - I have racquets.  
Rob."

Tuesday. Today was Tuesday. _Shit._

Sportswear - Jesus, did she actually own anything suitable for playing tennis in? She decided that her gym kit would have to do - fluorescent trainers were probably frowned upon, but frankly, she couldn't care much less if she tried. That sports hall was absolutely freezing, though - she'd have to wear some kind of sports jacket... which she didn't own. She concluded that a hoodie she usually wore on a Saturday when she was busy doing nothing but watching telly would suffice.

Whatever happened, she decided, she was absolutely not telling Gerry, Steve and Brian when practice was. The three of them would turn up just to laugh at her as she tried (and inevitably failed) to play tennis, and probably give themselves heart attacks in the process - she could still hear them laughing at her misfortune through the office wall now. No, tennis practice was going to be a strictly secretive affair.

She'd told the team that she had a meeting at five, but had in fact snuck off home to find her sportswear, which turned out to be hidden at the very back of her wardrobe, underneath the three bottles of whisky she'd confiscated from Gerry last month.

She looked like a right idiot, she decided - black cropped sports tights (was that even what they were called? All she knew was that she'd chosen them purely because they made her legs look quite nice), grey and bright orange trainers, an old, oversized t-shirt, and a black hoodie which smelt strongly of white wine, badly disguised with half a bottle of perfume.

Nonetheless, she arrived at the sports hall unnoticed, sneaking in with her large handbag slung over her shoulder in an . She couldn't see Strickland, but by one of the nets, a pair of teenagers were waiting, looking typically bored. The girl was tall and slim, black hair tied up in a ponytail which showed off her long neck and sharp jawline, and the boy stood next to her was tall too, but brown-haired. He nodded over to Sandra, and the teenage girl turned and walked over to the Superintendent, suddenly not looking quite as intimidating.

"Are you Sandra?" She asked. Her accent was strong, like Gerry's, and she had chewing gum in her mouth, the smell of spearmint surrounding her. She wore pretty much the same outfit as Sandra, but willowy as she was, she could carry it off with great ease - girls like that could wear bin bags and still look like runway models. Sandra nodded, making some kind of noise in an attempt to signify that she wasn't mute.

"I'm Leanne. I'm Rob's son's girlfriend... I play tennis, so because Mr Competitive wants to win, he's roped me and Rufe in."

Ah, Rufus. Mini-Strickland. Sandra had often wondered what he'd look like - Strickland had a photo of his son and daughter in his office, but it had been taken years ago; the colours faded slightly through the glass. She caught a glimpse of her boss' son behind Leanne - he looked like his father, that was for sure, albeit taller than him, and with considerably more style. Being the son of Robert Strickland, he was obviously privately educated, presumably with the accent and mannerisms to prove it, and he began to make his way over to his girlfriend and Sandra.

Leanne turned her head for a moment, her long, satin like black hair swishing behind her. She was a pretty girl - not that her looks would matter to her boyfriends father. Sandra imagined that Robert Strickland wouldn't be pleased with his son's choice of girlfriend unless she was a minor royal, or at the very least, educated at the cost of most people's houses. Sandra didn't imagine Leanne fell into either of those categories.

"Hi. My... er, my dad's told me a lot about you." Well, if that sentence hadn't been prepared at Eton, Sandra would have eaten her own trainers.

"Likewise." Sandra responded with a forced smile, wondering to herself exactly how she'd managed to end up doing this. There were footsteps behind her from the entrance to the sports hall, and she turned, to see Strickland in his... well, sportswear.

Shorts.

DAC Strickland was wearing shorts.

_Oh, Jesus._


	2. Chapter 2

_**Thank you for all of your reviews on the last chapter! This one isn't as eventful, but it's pretty important to the ultimate plot of the story.**_

* * *

_Shorts._

_Oh, Jesus._

Sandra could only imagine that she'd looked like a startled animal at the sight of the DAC in shorts. She looked at the ceiling innocently for a second or two, trying not to burst out laughing as she probably would have if it was anyone else, before gaining some composure and managing (just) to look at him with a neutral expression.

She let her eyes surreptitiously glance at his exposed legs for a moment - no harm could come of that, surely, could it? To her surprise, he didn't actually have bad legs - in fact, they were far more muscular than she'd ever thought they could be. It was a shame to cover them up by wearing suits all week... shut up, Sandra, shut up. This is DAC Rob Strickland, for God's sake.

"Sandra! Good to see you. You've met Rufus and... and Leanne, I see." He sounded far more enthusiastic about this upcoming tennis session than Sandra was. Then again, Sandra would rather have been pretty much anywhere but there at that precise moment in time, so it wasn't difficult for anyone to be more enthusiastic than her. His tone altered noticeably when he mentioned his son's girlfriend - as if she wasn't stood right in front of him, listening to his every word as he referred to her as if she was the scum of the earth, when in reality it just seemed that her only crime was being working class.

"Yes, Sir, I have." Sandra smiled, hoping for nothing more than this hour or so to go by as fast as possible, so that she could get home, have a takeaway and a glass of wine, and watch some shit telly.

"Right, well, let's get started, shall we?"

Strickland handed her a racquet, which she took with another forced smile as she threw her handbag onto a bench at the side of the court, before he strode over to the other side of the court with his son, leaving Sandra stood next to Leanne, who looked as if she was about to knock her boyfriend's father out with her serve. Not that Sandra could really blame her.

"Do you play tennis or does he just fancy you?" Leanne asked in an undertone, her dark eyes glinting at Sandra as she bounced the ball on the court. She flicked her hair behind her, looking across the court to where her boyfriend and his father were conversing, the latter looking at Sandra and Leanne out of the corner of his eye.

"The last time I played tennis was after Wimbledon in 1979, when I was drunk and at university." Sandra admitted, not mentioning the teenager's questioning as to whether or not Strickland did fancy her. _Did he?_ The boys always joked that he did, but surely they were just winding her up. He couldn't fancy her, surely. _Could he?_

"Oh," Leanne answered, laughing slightly, "Don't worry, he pretends he's Fred Perry an' all, but he ain't. You'll be fine. You know the basics?"

"I played at school, yeah." Sandra nodded, sounding slightly more confident than she felt. Ah well, if nothing else, she could have a good laugh at Strickland's expense, she thought - there was no clause in her contract saying that she had to take a petty tennis match seriously, was there? She bloody hoped not, or she'd be out of a job faster than Gerry could move to hide a whisky bottle.

"Do you want to start with a rally, just to warm up?" Rufus shouted across the court to Leanne, seemingly eager to get out of an awkward conversation with his father. Leanne nodded, and bounced the ball against the floor of the sports hall a couple of times, her elegant left hand catching it each time it came to the right level, before throwing it up in the air and serving across to her boyfriend with more power than Sandra had seen any girl of her size produce. Oh shit, they were going to be really good, weren't they?

The teenagers kept up an impressively fast rally for a minute or so, before they beckoned the two adults in from the sides of the court, where they had retreated so as to avoid getting in the way and being knocked out, as they continued their rally. Sandra stepped forward tentatively, watching the ball whiz past her from Leanne's hit and she raised her racquet in preparation for Strickland's response, gulping nervously. Oh, bloody hell.

The green ball bounced off Strickland's racquet and flew over the net, and somehow Sandra managed to hit it back. This wasn't going quite as badly as she'd thought it would, so far - other than seeing Strickland in shorts, things seemed to be going relatively well, really.

Sandra watched Rufus admiring his girlfriend's physique as they played - the poor lad went to Eton, where he had about as much hope of finding a girl as he had of inventing time travel. Sandra hadn't got a clue how he'd come across Leanne, who didn't exactly seem the type of girl whose parents had thirty thousand pounds per year to pay for her education - the very reason why Strickland Senior didn't approve of her, she suspected.

Rufus caught the ball cleanly with his left hand as it came towards him, bouncing it a couple of times on the court before walking towards the net, along with the other three.

"Practise serving?" he questioned, to the agreement of his father, "Right, er, Leanne, do you want to serve to my dad, then I'll serve to Sandra over there?" he nodded in the direction of the other court, picking up his sports bag from the side of the net where it lay next to Sandra's distinctly un-athletic handbag. Sandra collected her bag from the ground, following her boss' son and observing the almost unseen way in which he brushed her waist with his hand, and she smiled vaguely, looking at him with her glass-like orbs for a moment. Had Sandra not been a police officer, she probably wouldn't have noticed the subtle gesture, and that seemed to ring true for her boss, too, who looked as if steam was about to start pouring from his ears at any moment as he watched his son.

"How long have you and Leanne been together?" Sandra asked quietly as they made their way over to the other court in an otherwise awkward silence.

"Since we were sixteen, so... nearly two years. I think my dad hoped that it wouldn't last two weeks, though, to be honest, after he'd met her." Rufus answered, raising his eyebrows slightly and glancing at Sandra momentarily.

"Why, because she's not posh enough?"

"Basically, yes. She goes to the same private school as my sister, but she's from a council estate in Haringey - she won a scholarship. Her dad couldn't afford to pay, even if he wanted to; there's Leanne, then she's got two younger brothers and a sister. She looks after them most of the time - I imagine you probably know her father pretty well. Michael Holmes."

"Really? She's his daughter? Christ." Sandra said, almost without thinking. She'd put that man away at least three times for various crimes; drug dealing, assault... and to think; his daughter was going out with a Strickland. No wonder the DAC was hopping mad; the Holmes family probably weren't the best in-laws to be had, never mind for a high-ranking police officer. As far as Sandra knew, Holmes only got out long enough to breed, before being sent back to jail for something or other.

"Really. My dad treats her like it's her fault, though, and it isn't. She's come from a family like that, but she's not a criminal. She's just from Haringey, that's all."

"Well, your dad wouldn't be pleased unless you came home with a member of the aristocracy, would he?"

He laughed, glancing back over momentarily to where Leanne was serving to his father, a look of concentration on her face. She was employing all of the power in her body to hit the ball as violently as she could; presumably in a furious response to the way he was talking about her. Sandra smiled as she walked over to the opposite side of the net, dropping her handbag and taking a second to tie her straight, blonde hair up. Well, in the view of her boss, the skeleton in the Strickland family closet was most definitely Leanne Holmes.

_Curiouser and curiouser._


End file.
